The Workout Of The Day for Friday, 9.10 – “Thank god It’s Friday”
Howdy folks,
We’re about to enter the second weekend in September, and racing has started in my area, and in much of the country.
I’m going to assume that you’re racing at least one of the days this weekend, and If you aren’t?
Pretend you are, and set yourself up to do a race simulation this weekend.
Play everything just as you would if you did have a race, and get some training in at the same time you work on your race weekend routine.
So, about that routine…
Most folks seem to find that they do best in their races if they are able to take it easy two days before the event, and then open the pipes with some hard efforts the day before.
That’s the format we’re following this weekend.
We’re going to assume you’re racing on Sunday this week, and so, your workout today is…
Two (ish) Hour Moderate Ride –
Get on your bike.
Put it in the small ring.
Ride for 2 hours at a moderate tempo; don’t attack the hills, don’t sprint at the town line, just roll along.
OK – maybe not that slowly… just don’t kill it today.
You’re riding hard enough to see the flowers, but you’re going hard enough that you can’t take the time to smell them as they recede in the rear view mirror.
No hard efforts. Just roll steady… Sub threshold the whole way, for those who speak the techno-lingo.
This ride should be 1 full step above a full recovery ride, hard enough that you know you’re actually riding, but not hard enough that you feel gassed at any time during the ride, or when you get home.
When you step off the bike, you should feel like you could do it all over again, and that you kinda’ want to.
Make sense?
What we’re trying to do here is recover a little bit from the week, but at the same time get ready to ride hard over the weekend.
The reason you need to ride some today – and not completely without intensity – is that you don’t want to send your body into recovery mode.
If you’re watching the Vuelta on TV, or if you happened to watch the Tour Day France this summer, you might have noticed how the announcers always make a big deal about how the riders get on the bikes and do some pretty hard riding during the “rest” day.
Same idea.
If you take a day completely off, your body has a tendency to flip into full-on recovery mode; “Thank god it’s Friday, that’s over with, now I can get some damn rest!!”
This just isn’t a great idea if you’ve got a race you’re going to do the next day.
Ever had dead legs in a race, try to stand up and get on the gas at the start and find that the damn body just won’t respond?
Yeah. It does suck.
We work to avoid this by doing that riding today.
Have fun!
M
Crosssports's Weblog 